Monday, July 30, 2012

[Jules Verne's Le Sphinx des glaces, published in 1897, was a sequel to Edgar Allan Poe's novel, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym. Of the two existing English translations, the 1898 version by Mrs. Cashel Hoey, under the title An Antarctic Mystery, is by far the more complete, and is in many ways quite good. However, it omits as much as forty percent of the the original text, eliminating much of the descriptive material and some dialogue. I have begun a fairly extensive revision and completion of that translation, and will post chapters on the blog as they are completed.]

The Sphinx of the Ice Fields

By Jules Verne

Chapter I

The Kerguelen Islands

No doubt this tale of the Sphinx of Ice
will be met with disbelief. No matter. It is good, I think, that it be put
before the public, which is free to believe it or not.

It would be difficult to imagine a more
appropriate place for the beginning of these marvelous and terrible adventures
than the Desolation Islands. Their name was given to them, in 1779, by Captain
Cook, and, indeed, given what I have seen during a stay of some weeks there, I
can affirm that they deserve the lamentable title given them by the celebrated
English navigator. Desolation Islands—that says it all.

I know that geographical nomenclature
insists on the name of Kerguelen, generally adopted for the group which lies in
49° 45’ south latitude, and 69° 6’ east longitude. This is because, in the year
1772, the French baron Kerguelen was the first to report those islands in the
southern part of the Indian Ocean. Indeed, the commander of the squadron on
that voyage believed that he had found a new continent on the limit of the
Antarctic seas, but in the course of a second expedition he recognized his
error. There was only an archipelago. But trust me when I say that Desolation
Islands is the only suitable name for this group of three hundred isles or
islets in the midst of the vast expanse of ocean, which is constantly disturbed
by austral storms

Nevertheless, the group is inhabited, and
as of August 2, 1839, thanks to my presence at Christmas Harbour, the number of
Europeans and Americans who formed the nucleus of the Kerguelen population had
for two months even been increased by one unit. It I true, I only awaited an
opportunity to leave the place, having completed the geological and
mineralogical studies which had brought there.

Christmas Harbour belongs to the most
important isle of the archipelago, with an area measuring four thousand five
hundred kilometers square—half that of Corsica. It is quite secure, with
straight and easy access. The ships can moor there in four fathoms of water. After
having doubled, to the north, that Cape François that Table Mountain dominates from
twelve hundred feet, look across the arch of basalt, largely hollow at its
point. You will see a narrow bay, protected by islets against the furious winds
from the east and west. At the base is carved Christmas Harbour. Let your ship
make way directly starboard. When it is returned to its anchorage, it can rest
on a single anchor, with ease in turning, as the bay is not covered by ice.

Moreover, the Kerguelens possess other
fiords, and those by the hundreds. Their coasts are ragged, frayed like the hem
of a poor woman's skirt, especially in the parts between the north and the
south-east. Islands and islets abound. The soil, of volcanic origin, is
composed of quartz, mixed with a bluish stone. In summer it is covered with
green mosses, grey lichens, various hardy plants, especially wild saxifrage.
Only one edible plant grows there, a kind of cabbage, with a very bitter flavor,
that one would seek in vain in other countries.

There are indeed surfaces which are
suited, as rookeries, for the habitat of royal and other penguins, innumerable
bands of which people these environs. Dressed in yellow and white, their heads
thrown back, their wings appearing like the sleeves of a robe, these stupid
fowl resemble from afar a line of monks in a procession along the shoreline.

Let us add that the islands afford
refuge to numbers of sea-calves, seals, and sea-elephants. The taking of those
amphibious animals either on land or from the sea is profitable, and may lead
to a trade which will bring a large number of vessels into these waters.

On the day already mentioned, I was
strolling on the port when my host accosted me and said:

“Unless I am much mistaken, time is
beginning to seem very long to you, Mr. Jeorling?”

The speaker was a big tall American,
installed for twenty years at Christmas Harbour, who kept the only inn on the
port.

“If you will not be offended, Mr.
Atkins, I will acknowledge that I do find it long.”

“Not at all,” replied that gallant. “You
can imagine that I ma as accustomed to answers of that kind as the rocks of the
Cape are to the rolling waves.”

“And you resist them as well.”

“Of course. From the day of your
arrival at Christmas Harbour, when you descended at the inn of Fenimore Atkins,
at the sign of the Green Cormorant, I said to myself: In a fortnight, if not in
a week, you would have enough of it, and would be sorry you had landed in the
Kerguelens.”

“No, Mr. Atkins; I never regret anything
I have done.”

“That’s a good habit, sir.”

“Besides, in wandering this group, I
have gained by observing curious things. I have crossed the rolling plains,
covered with hard stringy mosses, and I shall take away curious mineralogical
and geological specimens with me. I have gone sealing, and taken sea-calves
with your people. I have visited the rookeries where the penguin and the
albatross live together in good fellowship, and that was well worth my while.
You have given me now and again a dish of petrel, seasoned by your own hand,
and very acceptable when one has a fine healthy appetite. I have found a
friendly welcome at the Green Cormorant, and I am very much obliged to you.
But, if I am right in my reckoning, it is two months since the Chilean two-master
Penãs set me down at Christmas Harbour in mid-winter…

“And you want,” exclaimed the innkeeper,
“to get back to your country, which is mine as well, Mr. Jeorling, to return to
Connecticut, to see once more Hartford, our capital…”

“Doubtless, Mr. Atkins, for I have been
a globe-trotter for close upon three years. One must come to a stop and take
root at some time.”

“Yes! Yes! And when you have taken
root, replied the American with a wink, you end up putting out branches!”

“Just so! master Atkins. However, as I
have no more family, it is likely that I shall bring the line of my ancestors
to an end! At forty I do not fancy putting out branches, as you have, my dear
innkeeper, for you are a tree, and a fine tree at that…”

“An oak, and even a green oak, if you
will, Mr. Jeorling.”

“And you were right to obey the law of
nature! Now, if nature has given us the legs to walk… “

“She has also given us something to sit
upon!” responded Fenimore Atkins, with a great laugh. “That’s why I am
comfortably settled at Christmas Harbour. My companion Betsey has gratified me
with ten children, who will present me with grandchildren in their turn, who
will climb my calves like kittens.”

“Will you never return to your native
land?… “

“What would I do there, Mr. Jeorling, and
what could I have done?… The poverty!… Here, on the contrary, in these Desolation
Islands, where I have never had the occasion to feel desolate, ease has come to
me and mine.

“Without doubt, Master Atkins, and I
congratulate you for it, since you are happy… Nevertheless, it is possible that
one day the desire might take hold of you…”

“To uproot myself, Mr. Jeorling!… Come
on!… An oak, I tell you, and just try to uproot an oak, when it is rooted to mid-trunk
in the rock of Kerguelen!”

It was delightful to hear this worthy
American, so completely acclimated to this archipelago, so vigorously tempered
in the harsh inclemencies of its climate. He lived there, with his family, like
the penguins in their rookeries,–the mother, a hearty matron, the sons, all
strong, in thriving health, knowing nothing of the distempers or dilatations of
the stomach. Business was good. The Green Cormorant, adequately stocked, had
the practice of all ships, whalers and others, that dropped anchor at
Kerguelen. He provided them with tallow, grease, tar, pitch, spices, sugar,
tea, canned goods, whiskey, gin, brandy.

One would have looked in vain for a
second inn at Christmas-Harbour. As for the sons of Fenimore Atkins, they were
carpenters, sail-makers, fishermen, and hunted amphibians at the base of all
the passes during the warm season. They were honest folk who had, without much
ado, followed their destiny…

“Well, Master Atkins, let me assure you,”
I declared, “I am delighted to have come from Kerguelen, and I will take away
good memories… However, I will not be sorry to take to the sea again…”

“Come on, Mr. Jeorling, a little
patience!” this philosopher told me. You should never desire or hasten the hour
of separation. Do not forget, besides, that the fine weather will not be slow to
return… In five or six weeks…

“In the meantime,” I cried, “the hills
and the plains, the rocks and the shores will be covered with thick snow, and
the sun will not have the strength to dissolve the mists on the horizon…”

“Why, Mr. Jeorling! You can already see
the wild grass push up through its white jacket!… Look closely…”

“Yes, with a magnifying glass!… Between
us, Atkins, do you dare to claim that your bays are not still ice-locked in
this month of August, which is the February of our northern hemisphere?…”

“I acknowledge that, Mr. Jeorling. But
again I say have patience! The winter has been mild this year. The ships will
soon show up, in the east or in the west, for the fishing season is near.”

“May heaven attend you, Master Atkins, and
may it guide safely to port the ship which cannot tarry… the schooner Halbrane!…

"Captain Len Guy, replied the
innkeeper. He is a gallant sailor, although he is English—there are fine folks
everywhere–and he takes in his supplies at the Green Cormorant."

“You think that the Halbrane…”

“Will be reported within eight days off
Cape Francois, Mr. Jeorling, or, if it is not, it will be because there is no
longer a Captain Len Guy, and if there is no longer a Captain Len Guy, it is
because the Halbrane has sunk under full sail between the Kerguelens and the
Cape of Good Hope!”

With that, and a haughty gesture, indicating
that such a turn of events was hardly possible, Master Fenimore Atkins left me.

I hoped that the predictions of my innkeeper
would not be slow in coming to pass, for the season advanced. As he said, there
were already visible symptoms of the summer season–summery for these waters, at
least. Let the site of the principal island be roughly the same in latitude as
that of Paris in Europe and Quebec City in Canada, very well! But it is a
question of the southern hemisphere, and, we know it well, thanks to the
elliptical orbit that the earth describes, of which the sun occupies one of the
foci, that hemisphere is colder I winter than the northern hemisphere, and also
warmer than it in summer. What is certain is that the wintry period is terrible
in the Kerguelens because of the storms, and because the seas are frozen for
several months, although the temperature there is not extraordinarily harsh, – being
on an average two degrees centigrade in winter, and seven in summer, as in the
Falklands or at Cape Horn.

It goes without saying that, during
that period, Christmas-Harbour and the other ports no longer shelter a single
ship. In the era of which I speak, steamers were still rare. As for sailing
ships, concerned to not let themselves be captured by the ice, they went in
search of the ports of South America, on the west coast of Chili, or those of
Africa, – most generally Cape-Town of the Cape of Good Hope. A few row boats, some
taken by the frozen waters, others beached and encrusted in ice to the tip of
their masts, was all that the surface of Christmas-Harbour offered to my view.

However, if the differences in temperature
were not great in the Kerguelens, the climate there was still damp and cold. Very
frequently, especially in the western parts, the group is assailed by squalls
from the north or west, mixed with hail or rain. To the east, the skies are
clearer, although the light there is half veiled, and on that side the snow
line on the mountain ridges is at fifty feet above the sea.

Thus, after the two months that I had
just passed in the Kerguelen archipelago, I awaited nothing so much as the occasion
to depart again on the schooner Halbrane, the qualities of which my
enthusiastic innkeeper never ceased to extol to me, from both the social and
maritime points of view.

“You will never find better!” he
repeated day and night. “Of all the long captain in the long history of the
English fleets, not a one is comparable to my friend Len Guy, either for
bravery, or for skill!… If he showed himself more forthcoming, plus talkative, he
would be perfect!”

Thus I had resolved to take the
recommendation of Master Atkins. My passage would be booked as soon as the schooner
had dropped anchor in Christmas-Harbour. After a rest of six to seven days, she
would take to the sea again, headed for Tristan da Cunha, whence she carried a
cargo of tin and copper ore.

My plan was to remain a few weeks of
the summer season on that island. From there, I intended to set out for
Connecticut. However, I did not fail to take into due account the share that
belongs to chance in human affairs, for it is wise, as Edgar Poe has said,
always “to reckon with the unforeseen, the unexpected, the inconceivable, which
have a very large share (in those affairs), and chance ought always to be a
matter of strict calculation.”

And if I quote our great American
author, it is because, although I am a very practical sort, of a very serious
character and a hardly imaginative nature, I nonetheless admire that genial
poet of human peculiarities.

Besides, to return to the Halbrane, or
rather to the occasions that would be offered me to embark at
Christmas-Harbour, I feared no disappointment. At that time, the Kerguelens were
visited every year by a large number of ships – at least five hundred. The
whale fishery gave fruitful results, as one will judge by the fact that an
elephant of the sea can provide a ton of oil, that is to say a return equal to
that of a thousand penguins. It is true that in recent years not more than a
dozen ships land at this archipelago, since the abusive destruction of the
cetaceans has so drastically reduced their number.

Thus, I had no uncertainty about the
opportunities that would present themselves to leave Christmas-Harbour, even
if, the Halbrane failing to make its rendezvous, captain Len Guy did not arrive
to clasp the hand of his chum Atkins.

Each day, I went for a walk around the
port. The sun was beginning to grow strong. The rocks, volcanic terraces and
columns, shed bit by bit their white winter gown. On the beaches, on the basalt
cliff, grew a wine-colored moss, and, offshore, snaked ribbons of seaweed fifty
or sixty yards long. On the flats, toward the far end of the bay, some grasses
raised their time points – and amongst them the lyella, which was of Andean
origin, those produced by the Fuegian flora,
and also the only shrub on this soil, the gigantic cabbage of which I have
already spoken, so precious for its anti-scorbutic properties.

As for land mammals, although marine mammals
abound in these parts, I did not encounter a single one, nor any batrachians or reptiles. There
were only a few insects – butterflies and other species – and even these did
not fly, for before they could put their wings to use, the atmospheric currents
would carry them away and onto the rolling billows of these seas.

Once or twice, I
had gone out in one of these solid longboats in which the fishermen face the
gales that beat the rocks of the Kerguelen like catapults. With these boats, one could attempt the
crossing to Cape-Town, and reach that port, if one had the time. But let me
assure you, I had no intention of leaving Christmas-Harbour under those
conditions… No! I would pin my hopes on the schooner Halbrane, and that without
delay.

In the course of these promenades around
the bay, my curiosity attempted to grasp all the various aspects of that rugged
coast, that bizarre, colossal, skeleton, all made up of igneous formations, whose
bluish bones emerged through holes
in winter’s white shroud…

What impatience gripped me, sometimes, despite
the wise counsels of my innkeeper, so happy with his existence in his house at
Christmas-Harbour! It is a rare breed, in this world, that the practice of life
has made into philosophers. However, in Fenimore Atkins, the muscular system
did not prevail over the nervous system. Perhaps he also possessed less
intelligence than instinct. Such people are better armed against the jolts of
life, and it is possible, when all is said and done, that their chances of
finding happiness here below are more considerable.

“And the Halbrane…?” I would say to
Atkins each morning.

“The Halbrane, Mr. Jeorling?” he would
respond to me in a positive tone. “Of course, it will arrive today, and if not
today, it will be tomorrow!… In any event, there will certainly come a day, will
there not, which will be the eve of the day when the flag of captain Len Guy will
fly at the entrance to Christmas-Harbour!”

Certainly, in order increase the field
of view, I would have had to climb the Table-Mount. By an ascent of twelve
hundred feet, one obtained a range of thirty-four or thirty-five miles, and,
even through the haze, perhaps the schooner would have been glimpsed twenty-four
hours sooner? But to climb that mountain, with its flanks still puffy with snow
to the very summit… only a fool would have thought of it.

In my rambles on the shore, I put
numerous amphibians to flight, sending them plunging into the newly released
waters. But the penguins, heavy and impassive creatures, did not decamp at my
approach. Was it not for the air of stupidity that characterizes them, one
would have been tempted to speak to them, on the condition of speaking their shrill,
deafening tongue. As for the black petrels, the black and white puffins, the
grebes, the terns, and the scoters, they were quick to take wing.

One day, I was permitted to witness the
departure of an albatross, saluted by the very best croaks of the penguins,—like
a friend who no doubt abandoned them forever. These powerful fliers can cover
stages of two hundred leagues, without taking a moment’s rest, and with such
rapidity that they sweep through vast spaces in a few hours.

That albatross, motionless upon a high
rock, at the end of the bay at Christmas-Harbour, watched the sea as the surf broke
violently on the reefs.

Suddenly,
the bird rose with a great sweep into the air, its claws folded beneath it, its
head stretched out like the prow of a ship, uttering its shrill cry: a few
moments later it was reduced to a black speck in the vast height and
disappeared behind the misty curtain of the south.

To be
continued…

[Working
translation by Shawn P. Wilbur, based in part
on the 1898 translation by Mrs. Cashel Hoey.]

The melancholy Occasion of his Travels, His Shipwreck with one
Companion on a desolate Island. Their way of Life. His accidental discovery of
a Woman for his Companion. Their peopling the Island.

ALSO

A Description of a most surprising Eagle, invented by his Son Jacob,
on which he flew to the Moon, with some Account of its Inhabitants. His return,
and accidental Fall into the Habitation of a Sea Monster, with whom he lived
two Years. His further Excursions in Search of England. His Residence in
Lapland, and Travels to Norway, from whence he arrived at Aldborough, and
farther Transactions till his Death, in 1711. Aged 97.

...which manages to take a series of fairly familiar plots elements in some directions that are peculiar even for the genre. I'm overdue to bind a second Corvus Edition of this, but the pdf is available online.

Tuesday, July 24, 2012

[Anti-Malthus was originally published in The Phrenological Journal and Science of Health, August 1880, pages 72-76 and January 1881, pages 32-28. The author, Samuel Leavitt, was an associate of Joshua King
Ingalls and George Jacob Holyoake. His work appeared in various of the Oneida
colony publications, and in The Arena. In his Reminiscences, Joshua King Ingalls
wrote:

I should
apologize perhaps to Mr. Samuel Leavitt, for not mentioning his name before.
But he has been met on so many different platforms, I scarce know where to
place him, particularly. We were in accord on the land and interest problems:
but differed politically on the tariff and the greenback questions, although I
acted as treasurer for the Liberty Bell, which he published in the Peter Cooper
Presidential campaign. He advocated rational divorce for mismated couples. He
has been a newspaper man ever since I knew him. He was the author of
"Caliban and Shylock," "Peace Maker Grange," a social
romance, and "Our Money War," a most elaborate and exact statement of
the history of our money metallic or paper, since the existence of our nation,
with a bias in favor of fiat money.

Notice, near the end of
this essay, Leavitt's prediction that "a Central Council or a 'Pantarch'
will probably guide the movements and actions of the earth's twenty or thirty
billion inhabitants." The use of Stephen Pearl Andrews' term is probably
not accidental, and the vision here is perhaps not so far off from Andrews'
Pantarchy.]

Anti-Malthus

Samuel
Leavitt

I

ANTI-MALTHUS COLONIZE THE WHOLE EARTH WITH GOOD AND WISE
PEOPLE; AND THUS FULFILL ITS NORMAL DESTINY. WHAT POPULATION WILL THE EARTH CONTAIN?

This essay is not, as might be
supposed, a studied effort to refute the special doctrines of Malthus. It is
simply an effort toward the rebuttal of one of his main propositions, namely,
that great and immediate effort is necessary toward curtailing the natural
increase of the human family. Two simple questions will be discussed in this
writing.

1. Is there in the aggregate, or
in any large portion of the earth, a real overpopulation? 2. What means shall
be used to fill the earth with good and wise people?

As to the first point, the facts
concerning the actual population of the various countries will be at once
considered.

The area of dry land upon the
globe is in round numbers about 51,590,000 square miles, equaling
33,000,000,000 square acres.

The human family is now reckoned
to number 1,400,000,000 or about one billion and a half. China, which is so
often referred to as over-populated, has 3,742,000 square miles, much of it
waste, and 446,000,000 inhabitants, according to a recent report of Prof. Schem.
This gives the Chinese five acres apiece. Japan has about 150,000 square miles
or 96,000,000 acres, say two and five-sevenths acres for each person.

Saxony, in the German Empire,
has 3,698,500 acres and 2,556,244 people; or about an acre and a half apiece.
Belgium is said to have one person for each acre.

So then, this globe, filled as
to its dry land, with people, would contain about thirty-three billions if
populated at the Belgic rate; twenty-two billions at the Saxon rate; twelve
billions at the Japanese rate, and six and a half billions at the Chinese rate,
yet people go snuffling around, bewailing the swift coming of "the crack
of doom," when we have as yet less than a billion and a half of
fellow-creatures around us here; and have no evidence that the number was ever
greater than that,

The greatest evil accruing from
this idea is, that it gives hard-hearted people an excuse for still further
hardening their hearts against their poorer fellows, and—as in the case of the
attitude of some European nations toward their foreign dependencies calmly and
stolidly watching the slow starvation of millions of famine-stricken wretches.

THE
CONTRADICTIONS OF MALTHUS.

As to Malthus, he was not a bad
man, and he was a hard-working, careful, patient student and collector of
facts. But he would see nothing except from an aristocratic standpoint: was
quite firmly convinced that the many were born ready saddled and bridled that
the few might ride." As to England, for instance, it never occurred to him
that millions of poor workers could comfortably subsist upon the ground wasted
by the nobility and gentry in parks; and that millions more could have a
comfortable living in the cities, if the factory owners would be content with a
fair share of the profit upon the labor of their "hands," and by
greatly diminishing the hours of labor give employment to these other millions.

A favorite statement of Malthus
is, "Population always increases where the means of subsistence
increases." This might have been a saying of important significance at his
time, when the subsistence of a community was usually gathered from its
immediate neighborhood. Now, however, when the telegraph informs the ends of
the earth instantly, when any species of food becomes scarce at any point, and
steamers and rail cars can speedily supply the need from any region enjoying a
surplus, such a statement becomes quite meaningless.

The main natural checks to
population, according to Malthus, are, moral restraints, vice, and misery. He
seemed to put much more reliance upon the latter than upon the former, His
chief critic, the celebrated Godwin, justly remarked that he should have added
"bad human laws and institutions" to his list of existing checks. A
specimen of the faulty reasoning of Malthus is found in his statement
concerning the population of Australia. He gets his facts from Capt. Cooke,
with regard to the scarcity of population on that huge island; and sagely says:

"By what means the
inhabitants of this country are reduced to such numbers as it can subsist, is
not perhaps very easy to guess." He thus takes it for granted (forming the
conclusion from the supposed love that he evolved from his inner consciousness)
that the straggling savages who peopled Australia, in his day, numbered exactly
so many human creatures as the island was capable of feeding.

The philosopher is certainly
right in the abstract, where he maintains that if human propagation were
maintained at its now usual rate, after the "millennium" had arrived,
and vice, disease, and misery had ceased to check it, there would be danger of
a genuine worldwide overpopulation. We know that in "the good time
coming" there will be some new checks. But we also know that they will be
natural, and will in no sense militate against the welfare of individuals or
communities. We already get an inkling of what these checks will be, in the
fact that families of the highest culture and refinement are not as prolific,
though they make no attempt to check propagation, as those in the same nation
that are subjected to all manner of hardship and privation, short of that
extreme distress that always effectually checks population.

We may be sure of one thing—at
let those of us who believe in Divine Providence—that as fast as there is any
actual necessity for checks (a necessity never yet really reached), the good
and wise will be shown what checks to use, and will faithfully adopt them. All
the talk of Malthus about the food supply of barbarians and nomads goes for
nothing. Following his absurd "law" that population always increases
where the means of subsistence increases," he doubtless gravely decided
that the few wandering tribes of Indians on this continent represented fully
the population that it was capable of sustaining. Nomads never really try to
obtain the principal part of the subsistence that even they know to be
contained in the earth beneath their feet.

HOW TO
MAKE THE WHOLE EARTH HEALTHY.

O that I could send a glad cry
of surprise and discovery throughout the nations: "Increase, multiply,
replenish the wide earth! Fill it with wise and good people! It is not yet
one-tenth full. It will never be thoroughly healthy and habitable until it is
thoroughly filled by intelligent and virtuous human creatures, who will remove
all nuisances by a wise culture and drainage of every arable acre."

Here is an idea that is
reliable, and is quite opposite to the whole tenor of Malthusianism: namely,
that we should hasten to populate the globe densely, in order to make it truly
habitable. "How horrible! what madness!" exclaim the disciples of
this prophet of despair; "the very day the earth gets full, the people
will begin to starve, if not before, in spite of your millennium."

Our cheerful answer is:
"Trust in the Lord (or in Nature, if you prefer), and do good. Commit thy
way unto Him!"

There is now and then a streak
of light in the writings of Malthus that relieves the murkiness of his
pictures. The following from his Chapter II. really goes quite against his main
arguments. He says: "It has been observed that many countries at the
period of their greatest degree of populousness have lived in the greatest
plenty and have been able to export grain; . . . . and that, as Lord Kaimes
observes, 'A country can not easily become too populous; because agriculture
has the signal property of producing food in proportion to the number of
consumers.'"

This is a practically opposite
statement to that previously given, viz.: "Population always increases
where the means of subsistence increases."

Malthus pays a merited tribute
to the monasteries of Europe, where, he says, the agricultural monks have done
wonders in fertilizing waste and barren places. Truly here is a genuine work of
use for religious devotees The Romanist monks called Trappists have a grand
enthusiasm in this direction, similar to that of the old Benedictines. Already
have they made many sterile regions blossom like the rose. What a noble work to
fertilize the earth for coming happy generations! If people will insist upon
being martyrs, they can not select a better form of self-sacrifice. But there
is really little need for such work while the greater part of the fertile land
is still untilled. Beautiful, smiling wildernesses, the world over, are fairly
crying out for human culture and appreciation, and proffering unbounded sustenance
from their teeming bosoms.

Careful estimates show that the
Valley of Orinoco alone, where an acre of bananas will feed a village, would
supply nourishment for the whole population of the world. What nonsense, then,
to raise the alarm about over-population. Rather let those who feel an interest
in the general welfare busy themselves very specially in scattering the
multitudes now gathered in a few regions throughout the unoccupied fertile
places.

As the most striking novelty in
this writing is the demand that the earth be really filled with good and wise
people as soon as possible, in order that it may be made perfectly healthy, the
substantiation of that theory must be my main object. It seems a strange
statement that: Wise human creatures are Nature's great disinfectant! and this
can be proved; and a very important part of the proof is obtainable from the
recently developed facts concerning what is called the "Dry earth system
of treating sewage."

There is nothing more wonderful
in modern discovery—or rather re-discovery, for Moses tried to teach these
things to humanity thousands of years ago—than the disintegrating and
disinfecting effect of applying dry earth to animal and vegetable refuse. The
man of philosophic and philanthropic mind, who has used the same earth from six
to ten times in an earth closet, and found the disinfective and disintegrative
effect as complete the last time as the first, has visions rise before him of
the future blessedness of our race and the redemption of the earth under our
feet that are quite joyous. Such a man stands aghast as he beholds the waste
going on around him, in the destruction of soils and the materials that would
recuperate them.

I believe that by the help of
this system every living creature can be made to give back to the earth an
amount of fertilization, that, added to that derivable from air sunshine and
water will fully equal what it takes from the earth. In this fact, if a fact,
we have a solution of economical and agricultural questions, worth all the libraries
that have been written about the preservation of soils. It explodes also some
of the theories of Malthus.

PROPER
COLONIZATION.

Now as to the methods of
distributing the population of the earth, some say that the poor and foolish
can not be organized into successful colonies. Such point to the failure of
Robert Owen. But a colony is not necessarily a socialistic community. Ancient
and modern history are full of accounts of colonies that were successful. Every
migration of portions of tribes has been of that nature. Even socialistic
colonies, such as those of Shakers, etc., have been very successful in our
country.

Those who establish harmonious
colonies do a work like that of Sisters of Mercy on a battle-field; the latter
move over the field, soothing the wounded, without considering the nationality
of the combatants or the cause of their quarrel. So the founder of a colony
need not consider the politics of the people he removes to an improved
situation, nor the politics of those among whom he puts them. We should
remember when we wander through the miserable slums of a city, that while the
inhabitants of these places are half starved, the humming insects and the
singing birds are the sole occupants of millions of fertile acres, which would
afford these suffering humans happy homes and abundant sustenance. Many will
reply that thousands of these people are so shiftless that they would do no
better on the soil than they do in the slum. Here comes in the reorganization
of society again, and the time will come when men who are able financiers and
industrial managers will feel themselves as much bound to exercise their
peculiar gifts for human advancement, as a few clergymen, and also some
artists, literary men, etc., now do to exercise their peculiar gifts to that
end.

As the steam-engine, telegraphy,
and discoveries and inventions are rapidly making "all the world
akin," the fact of being our brother's keeper is more and more forced upon
the conscience of Christendom. The time will be when men and women who are not
wise or energetic enough to put themselves in fitting surroundings will be
persuaded to suffer themselves to be organized into some sort of association by
the wise and good, who will lead them to the green pastures and beside the
still waters of the less populous parts of the country. Then we shall have such
grand work done all over the land as glorious William Penn did, when he drew a
multitude after him to the sylvan land of Pennsylvania and the city of
Brotherly Love, and made it the model city of the world, though that is not
saying much. The possible majesty of an organized colonization movement is seen
in the fact that in 1878, when very few European emigrants came to the United
States, 800,000 of our people went west of the Mississippi. Through lack of
just those elements that colony migration would have given them, these isolated
settlers endured fearful privations. Thousands, having lost the savings of a
life-time in the universal destruction brought upon us by our rulers, between
1873 and 1878, had gathered up the wrecks of their fortunes, and some in
wagons, some on foot, pushed for the wilderness—an incoherent multitude.
Thousands who had money enough and brains enough to make very valuable and
successful members of skillfully-organized colonies soon found themselves out
of money, health, and hope, living in holes in the ground. They had staked
their last dollar on this great risk, and were now forced (when past middle age
in many cases) to return East and begin life again as "hands" in factory,
shop, and Store. The money they wasted would have taken them, under a true
cooperative system, in palace cars to palace homes on the prairies. What a
grand work to organize such, and save them from such destruction! What a
blessedness! Let each rich philanthropic man say: I will be an Industrial
Moses! I will stand right here in my lot and organize my employés in
co-operative workshops like Godin's, or lead a multitude, in shape of a
thoroughly-equipped colony, into the new country.

THE
MOUNTAINS AND DESERTS TO BE TILLED AND FILLED.

And now to return to the means
of getting the whole earth ready for an immense population. Whoever even admits
the truth of the "dry earth" doctrine will see that we have small
occasion as yet to fear over-population. When such means are in thorough use,
there need be no waste, no malaria. All available food material will be used.
But the world's population must be held under very strict control if there is
to be at no place either famine or over-production. Many new expedients will be
adopted. The earth will be gathered by great machines from the vast alluvial
deposits, where it is wasted (for instance, from the deltas of the Amazon,
Nile, Ganges), and deposited on the barren plains. This very work was done on a
large scale by the "mound builders," who once peopled this country.

Great discoveries will be made
in agricultural chemistry. Many materials now wasted will be replaced by others
that are cheaper and more available. We used to say, "The fire wood will
be used up"—then came the coal; we said, "The whales will all be
destroyed"— then came coal-oil; now we have been saying, "The coal
and coal-oil will run out"—and here comes electricity to take their place.

In the future the world's work
will be done, more and more, by machinery; therefore, human creatures will need
much less food than now, as their energies will not be so exhausted by hard
work. All the wildernesses, deserts, and mountains, up to the snow line, will
be turned to use in some way for human sustenance. The waters of the ocean w
ill be ransacked for edible fish, and its inedible monsters will be
exterminated (as will be all those of the land). All inland seas, lakes, ponds,
and streams will be stocked with fish, and vast water spaces will be covered
with human habitations, as in China.

A thousand or ten thousand years
from now, a Central Council or a 'Pantarch' will probably guide the movements
and actions of the earth's twenty or thirty billion inhabitants, just as the
wonderful train-controller, perched high at the north end of the Union depot in
New York, controls, by manipulating rows of buttons connected with the
telegraphic instruments, all the trains of the three great railroads centering
there. Whereas now able men control the distribution of money, produce, goods,
etc., over the world, in a way that suits their selfish aims, so then will the
same thing be done by men actuated by pure benevolence. That Central Council or
Bureau will be in electric communication with every corner of the earth, and will
be continually sending forth messages of information, warning and exhortation.

S. LEAVITT.

II

ANTI-MALTHUS—No.
2 MILLENNIAL BULLETINS

"The
Vision is for many days."

In the PHRENOLOGICAL JOURNAL for
last August there was an article entitled, "Anti-Malthus: Colonize the
Whole Earth with Good and Wise People; and thus Fulfill its Normal
Destiny." The points maintained were these:

1: There are thirty-three
billion acres of dry land upon our globe, and a billion and a half of people.
Filled with people at the Belgic rate it would contain nearly thirty billions;
at the Saxon rate, twenty-two billions; at the Japanese rate, twelve billions;
at the Chinese rate, six and a half billions.

2. It was shown that Malthus was
unreasonable and inconsistent in maintaining that there is any present danger
of over-population of the earth,

3. It was averred that wise and
good human creatures are Nature's great disinfectant; and that the earth will
not be thoroughly healthy, and therefore habitable, until it is completely filled
with such people, who will drain its swamps, and by the highest culture prevent
all malaria.

4. After showing how the earth
would be prepared for such an immense population, through the growth of science
and art, the following statement w as made in conclusion: "A thousand or
ten thousand years from now a Central Council or a 'Pantarch' will probably
guide the movements and actions of the earth's twenty or thirty billions of
inhabitants; just as the wonderful train-controller, perched high at the north
end of the Union depot in New York, controls, by manipulating rows of buttons
connected with the telegraphic instruments, all the trains of the three great
railroads centering there. Whereas now able men control the distribution of
money, produce, goods, etc., over the world, in a way that suits their selfish
aims: so then will the same thing be done by men actuated by pure benevolence.
That Central Council or bureau will be in electric communication with every
corner of the earth, and will be continually sending forth messages of
information, warning, and exhortation." The object of the present article
is to furnish illustrations of the probable nature of the bulletins that will
be issued from that central office when the population shall have reached twenty
billions. These illustrations will be given as quotations from the daily
official newspaper organ of the Central Council, and some discussion of each
will be added.

"BULLETIN 1.—Population too
thick in Van Diemen's Land. Make room for them in Patagonia."

Of course, such an exigency and
such an event as are here supposed must seem very remote, when we consider the
sparse population of those countries, and the seeming undesirableness of
Patagonia as a place of residence. But population is already pushing in there
from Buenos Ayres.

"BULLETIN 2.—Too many
oranges raised in the world. The Valley of the Amazon must for five years raise
them only for home consumption."

Here we begin to catch a glimpse
of the fact that the long prophesied "Millennium," or blissful
condition of the race, could not possibly be realized until the uses of steam,
electricity, etc., had been discovered. Granted the fact that the earth could
not be healthy until filled with good and wise people; we come next upon the
fact that the immense population proposed could not be kept in harmonious
working order without the swift means of intercommunication furnished by those
agencies. Furthermore, that a much higher plane of morality than any single
race has yet displayed would have to be reached by the whole race before any
imaginable external machinery would avail to preserve the peace and prosperity
of such a vast aggregation of nations, which must all yield implicit obedience
to the wise laws and instructions issuing from the sages gathered at the grand
center: for otherwise, no matter how well-intentioned most communities might
be, a single inharmonic member in the family of nations would cause a break in
the orchestration—dire confusion, famine, pestilence, and starvation through a
large section of the earth.

Higher morality—loftier manhood
and womanhood—is, therefore, the one remaining need, before "the good time
coming" can be ushered in. As the writer stood in the gallery of Machinery
Hall, in the Worlds Fair at Philadelphia, he said: Before me here is the
physical basis for the Millennium. But all these fruits of science and art are
now monopolized by the few shrewd and forceful. It remains, therefore, for the
masses to be so morally and intellectually elevated that they will be strong and
good and wise enough to enter upon their rightful inheritance in the elements
of production and the means of distribution, including those results of human
genius. The farmers in India, Ireland, Persia, and the "seven years of
(practical) famine in a land of plenty" in this country—1873-80—show how
useless it would be to fill the earth with people until a general high morality
makes decent self-government and national government possible.

But this necessary dissertation
leaves no room to discuss the orange crop, and this subject must be passed with
a bare allusion to the fact that either the Orinoco or Amazon basin could feed
the present population of the earth.

"BULLETIN 3.—A bad case of
coast fever at the mouth of the Congo River Africa. The authorities must
account for this oversight."

[The mouth of the Congo will
then be as healthy as our White Mountains are now.]

This, again, seems extravagant
to the superficial observer, as it is well known that a white person can now
scarcely live at all in that malaria-soaked region. But what is malaria? It is
simply a noxious gas liberated from abnormally rotting animal or vegetable
substances— when no longer serviceable in their organic shapes. Covering these
substances lightly with dry earth quickly and wonderfully dissolves them into
their original elements, and makes useful fructifying manure of them, without
letting any atom escape to poison living organisms. Think you that there will
be malarious fever in any part of beautiful, fertile Africa when twenty billions
of the wise and good inhabit the earth? No, indeed! Why, even now, in
densely-peopled portions of China, the well-instructed peasant carries a basket
to gather from the high way anything of a manurial nature he may observe in
passing.

"BULLETIN 4.—The people of
France must elevate their spiritual and esthetic tone so as to bring them to a
lower breeding ratio, or prepare to begin, four years from now, to send
annually to Kamschatka their surplus population, to the amount of a million a
year. Their normal limit, at present, is two hundred millions which is now
considerably exceeded."

In just such a manner would
population need to be regulated and transferred: and the absolute necessity of
a central guidance becomes more apparent as we proceed. France, for various
well-known reasons, is now stationary as to population. Under improved
conditions the country would naturally fill up; and that mercurial race, so
hard to control, might then need the prospect of a large forced emigration from
"La Belle France" to the less genial region mentioned, to induce them
to curtail their increase. But, of course, in the universally bettered
conditions of those times, life in Kamschatka would be more enjoyable than it
now is in the most favored regions.

"BULLETIN 5.—Too many foreign
airships and air-palaces gather in summer over the lake regions of Italy,
Scotland, and Ireland, over the Yellowstone and other American parks and
resorts around the higher peaks of the Andes in South America, the Himalayas in
Asia, and the Mountains of the Moon in Africa. They obscure the view and are
otherwise a nuisance."

Of course, we all know that the
occurrence of such events is only a question of time. The first steam-lifting
balloon was a sure prophecy of the swift-moving, heavy-freighted airpalace.

The clustering of such vehicles
about the most attractive places in summer is a natural event.

"BULLETIN 6.—The State of
Virginia, U. S., will be under censure for sparse population and inferior
cultivation of the region once known as The Dismal Swamp,' if another case of
chills and fever occurs there."

O, ye shiverers! beside all
malaria-breeding places, does it seem impossible for you to realize the
possibility of such immunity from this poison fiend—this evil "Prince of
the Power of the Air?" Behold how many old-settled regions, once redolent
of miasma, are now even under imperfect care and cultivation, apparently quite
free from it. The English literature of Shakespeare's time abounds with
allusions to the ague-smitten people of districts of Britain now quite exempt
from such evils. But what a new departure it would be to have the officials of
States and counties instructed by the higher authorities to bring more
population into them in order to increase their healthfulness! This would
present a refreshing contrast to the methods adopted by soil monopolists in
Scotland and Ireland, who drive the population from whole counties, to turn the
land into sheep and cattle ranges and game preserves. How utterly depressing to
the people driven out is the idea that they are cumberers of the ground."
How encouraging, on the other hand, to the people invited, would be a call for
population, when those invited were assured that they could not only prosper in
the new home, but also promote the prosperity of their new neighbors—and even
the health of those neighbors.

How encouraging, by the way, is
this call for a twenty-fold peopling of the earth, to the wretched multitudes
of the city tenement-houses; who have, indeed, reason to think that they are
cumberers of the ground. But, alas! how few are "good and wise!"—or
have a chance to be!

"BULLETIN 7.—The Khan of
Tartary is notified that if we can't prevent portions of reclaimed desert from
being again denuded of trees and other vegetation, and relaxing into barrenness
steps will be taken to put a better man in his place."

[It will be observed that the
perfect Millennium has not yet arrived.]

In the first article
considerable space was devoted to the methods by which wastes and wildernesses
and deserts would be reclaimed and made fertile. That process is in progress in
portions of our own country. The so called desert lands, this side of the Rocky
Mountains, are being rapidly reclaimed, and the rain belt is widening as the
soil is broken up and tree-planting progresses. Unfortunately thousands are
ruined "in mind, body, and estate," who, trusting to the lying
reports of land and railroad agents, rely too soon upon these recuperative
agencies. But we can not yet begin to see the limits of the improvements that
will accrue in this regard from agricultural chemistry, irrigation, artesian
wells, etc. As to chemistry, for instance, some one has discovered, lately,
that vast spaces on Long Island need only the addition of a certain cheap
chemical element to make them yield bountiful harvests.

"BULLETIN 8.—A case of
miscarriage in the Island of Sumatra is another warning to women not to spend
all night dancing during their last month. Twenty billions of people is little
enough to keep the earth healthy and happy. The nice balances of population can
not be maintained if such mishaps become frequent again."

That seems extravagant, even as
a fancy, concerning the good time coming. But who shall say what is impossible
in such directions? We know that there are Indian races existing, among whom
miscarriages are of very rare occurrence, and whose women are occupied only for
a few hours in parturition. The time prophesied will surely come, when "a
man shall be more precious than fine gold"—yea, even an infant. It appears
strange, again, that this preciousness of humanity, this dignity of human
nature, should occur when the earth is full of people, rather than when
population is scant. But this seems ordained, and careful study of all the
facts shows that it is natural. Yet how stupendous, how overwhelmingly glorious
the idea, that instead of nations slaughtering each other with all the enginery
of war that diabolical ingenuity can invent; instead of rulers of such
"civilized" nations as England tacitly encouraging famine and starvation
in its dependent Indias and Irelands, as "a means of bringing population
down to the proper number;" instead of infanticide and foeticide being
encouraged not only in heathen India and China, but also in Christian Europe
and America; instead of the strong everywhere ruthlessly destroying and
shortening the lives of the weak by forcing them to overwork and hurtful work:
a time should come when human creatures would be so precious that a foeticide
occurring in an island of the Asiatic Seas would be bulletined throughout the
twenty billions of the earth s inhabitants as a rare and shocking event!

"BULLETIN 9.—A stranger was
found yesterday wandering near Behring's Straits, American side, after ten in
the morning, without his breakfast—no one having offered him any. He had missed
the morning air-ferry-ship, and had been overlooked. Such occurrences take the
bloom from our boasted New Civilization."

That certainly opens a vista of
felicity in the high-noon of our glorious planet, that is delightful to
contemplate. There is nothing impossible about this. Given a world full of wise
and good people, producing abundant food for all—guarding carefully against
accidents to any—and the necessary conditions are obtained. Even now abundance
of nourishment for all living people always exists on the earth. If "man
to man would brother be," it would be properly distributed. Listen to this
description of the waste of natural products in South America, which contains
vast unoccupied acres of the most fertile lands in the world. Col. George Earl
Church, of London, in a report to the Governments of Brazil and Bolivia, says:

"Only the ocean fringe of
South America had been, to a limited extent, developed by modern methods of
transit; the Pacific coast represented simply the sharp slope of an
uninterrupted mountain wall from Panama to Patagonia, and neither man nor beast
could travel across the snow-swept barrier, abreast of the head waters of the
Amazon in Peru and Bolivia, without scaling the passes at an elevation in no
place lower, and in most of the passes as high, as the loftiest peak of the
Alps; Peru, with a Babel-like ambition, was then working heavenward with its
gigantic railway system, ignoring the fact that its richest and most extensive
lands are on the Atlantic slope. Alone of all the South American States, the
Argentine Republic appeared to appreciate the problem of opening the interior,
and, with the force of its credit and energy, pushed its railways toward the
heart of the continent. . . . I found millions of sheep, llamas, and alpacas,
browsing upon the mountain sides, and not a cargo of wool was exported; vast
herds of cattle roamed the plains, and yet an ox-hide was worth scarcely more
than a pound of leather in the European market; hundreds of tons of the richest
coffee in the world were rotting on the bushes, and only about ten tons per
annum were sent abroad as a rare delicacy; abundant crops of sugar in the river
districts were considered a misfortune by the planter, because there was no
market; the valleys of Cochabamba were rich in cereal wealth, unsalable when
the crop was too great for home consumption; not a valley or mountain-side but
gave agricultural, medicinal, and other products, such as commanded ready sale
in any foreign market; sixty-five kinds of rare and beautiful cabinet woods
stood untouched by man in the great virgin forests of the north and east. The
mountains were weighed down with silver, copper, tin, and other metals, and the
people gazing upon a wealth sufficient to pay the national debts of the world,
and yet unavailable for lack of means of communication."

"BULLETIN 10.—The Central
Office is happy to announce that the Caucasian is now the only race on the
earth. The last specimen of an inferior breed—a mixture of Malay, Creole, and
Esquimaux —died last week in New Zealand."

It is all very fine"—humane,
brotherly to extol the other races, but the fact remains that the Caucasian is
by far the highest. It seems scarcely possible that the perfect life hoped for
can be realized on this globe until the other races have gradually passed away,
as the North American Indian is now doing. We must be just and generous to
these races, and give them every chance of improvement while they remain; but
if it is their fate to pass away we can not prevent it. It seems apparent, for
instance, from the history of South America, that their intermingling by
marriage with us only produces an inferior mongrel, and hinders the advent of
the perfect human being. They must "go."

"BULLETIN 11.—The North
Pole Summer Sanitariums and Ice Cures being inconveniently crowded of late
years, large establishments of the sort are rapidly springing up at the South
Pole, on the Asiatic side, with daily air-ship lines to all principal points
south of the Equator."

There is nothing extraordinary
about this, when already we find the wealthy yachtsmen of England taking their
summer trips around the North Cape of Sweden, the most northerly point of
Western Europe.

"BULLETIN 12.—The wool crop
is getting short. Sheep-raising is not pushed properly on some of the higher
slopes of the Andes, Rocky Mountains, Himalayas, and Balkans."

Thus will the watchful eyes of
the Central Sages continually take in the situation on every rood of terra
firma; every rood will be to them a holy rood"—to be guarded with
religious care. The resources of our planet—its capacities for making twenty or
thirty billion people comfortable and happy—are immeasurable, when once wisdom
and goodness are permanently assured for the whole race. The Infinite One now,
when at length it seems safe to do so, has opened the eyes of our keenest men
to secrets of art and nature, the possession of which gives them powers such as
our forefathers would have considered Divine," or miraculous. These powers
will not long be monopolized by Rothschilds, Goulds, Vanderbilts, and Bonanza
kings.

"BULLETIN 13.—A large part
of the people of New Orleans, U. S., turned out on Wednesday to bid farewell to
a woman who had been banished to Nova Zembla, for wasting a bucket of slops, by
emptying it from a steamer into the Mississippi, instead of consigning it to
the proper manurial receptacle."

Well, it must be acknowledged
that this is rather straining a point, as to the mass of the population
attending this farewell. But the idea about such a waste being considered
reprehensible in that "Beautiful Hereafter" is "solid." A
storm of indignation will soon arise against the system of agriculture that has
sent the virgin soil of so many of our States to Europe, in the shape of
tobacco, cotton, wheat, etc., and so much more of our fertility to the sea
through the sewers of our cities.

"BULLETIN 14.—The Central
Council takes pleasure in announcing that apparently as a result of the solar
convulsions of recent years, and the consequent violent, but harmless
perturbations of our planet, several new, warm streams have been for some time
pouring from the Equator to both poles. Those of the Pacific converging at
Behring's Straits pour through into the Arctic region a current so hot that it
is hardly endurable as a hot bath The American Gulf Stream and the Japanese
Curo Siwo are much hotter than before. As a consequence, the climate is so
changing in those northern regions that upper British America, Siberia, and
some of the Antarctic lands are becoming quite pleasant and fruitful regions.
If this process continues a few years, we may be able to announce the
possibility of raising the earth's population to twenty-five billions. Other
causes, as yet unexplainable, have produced an increase of direct sun-heat in
those regions. P. S. Another fact noticeable is a diminished heat in the Torrid
Zone."

"BULLETIN 15.—The electric
light towers of the world generally will have to be more carefully treated.
Complaints come in from various quarters that travelers along very prominent
highways are frequently unable to read their newspapers at night."

"BULLETIN 16.—The people of
a village on the banks of the Niger River, Africa, were horror-struck lately,
at observing an odor of decaying, malaria-breeding vegetation, issuing from the
garden of a citizen. Investigation showed a rank undergrowth of rotting weeds.
The man excused himself on the plea that being a poet he had been for a
fortnight in a fine frenzy of imaginative creation, and had neglected his
weeds. Excuse not received. He was sent to the Antarctic Fisheries, where high
cultivation of the soil is not called for, and there is no chance to waste the
food-producing gases."

"BULLETIN 17.—A melancholy
circumstance is reported from the Bernese Alps. A lovely maiden of eighteen
years told her first, and therefore true, love three years ago that she
believed in long engagements, and did not wish to marry him for at least five
years. Not willing of course, to think of marrying any but his 'own and only
one,' fearing that his admiration for the other sex might overcome his
resolution in that unprecedented long interval, he built himself a stone hut
high up in the Alps, and subsists as a goat-herdsman, and occasionally visits
his whimsical betrothed. Girls should be careful how they trifle with these
sacred matters."

The above, soberly considered,
must be counted as a legitimate illustration of the fact that on a paradisaical
planet, there will be an absolute lack of tragedies; and incidents that seem
laughably trivial to us, as matters of national consideration, will be the only
variations from the uniform felicity. In that blissful time the first love will
be usually the only love. For all young people will be then thoroughly
instructed in physiology, phrenology, psychometry, hygiene, etc., so that they
will guard their hearts until a true mate appears. Moreover, all then living in
associated homes, will have an abundance of young folks to choose from, and
will thus avoid the haphazard marriages that inevitably result from the
isolation of our present modes of life.

"BULLETIN 18.—It has
chanced, 'in the whirligig of time,' that Boston, once so proud of its
superiority, is now the most barbarous place on the earth. A middle-aged
citizen so far forgot himself in the heat of argument yesterday, as to call
another citizen 'a liar.'"

"BULLETIN 19.—In the
present active state of human sympathy, people need to be careful about making
demands upon it. Several air-ships arriving lately at Tobolsk from the North,
containing people who said that they had tasted no strawberries and cream this
year—the people of that place immediately stripped their vines of the delicious
berries to present them to the strangers, and so had none for themselves for a
week afterward."

"BULLETIN 20.—On and after
the 10th prox. the Society of Sky Painters will present a series of paintings
by the new process upon the zenith on each clear day; passing around the earth
from east to west. They will begin at Siam; and knowing by telegraph how far
each picture is seen, will make them continuous by beginning the next at the
farthest point at which the picture of the previous ray was plainly visible.
The panorama will illustrate the battles of Armageddon—the last great battles
between right and wrong, truth and error, reason and madness, vice and virtue,
selfishness and benevolence, religion and atheism order and disorder. These
were fought upon the soil of North America, and their representation will form
very striking pictures."

Now all this will seem very
fanciful to some, very absurd to others. But every one of these bulletins"
is somewhat founded upon existing facts. Even if all the fancywork be set
aside, the truth remains, that the doctrine concerning the filling of the earth
with good and wise people is incontrovertible.